Blank hated this place. The trees around were dense enough to block out any moonlight, and even if any light appeared, it only made terrain around more confusing via dancing shadows. But by far the worst part was lack of edible food. She could feel her mind slowly turning savage.
She lost almost everything in the woods, including her sword that got stuck in a web. Her clothing got ripped apart by thorny vines and glasses sunk in a puddle. Blank looked like an animal and felt like one more and more.

She heard footsteps in the distance, echoing through woodland. They were too loud for local fauna, it was a person. Maybe they knew a way out of here?

Cyran often took comfort in the shadows. Where others found fright in the unknown that the darkness held, Cyran was reassured by it. There was an honesty in knowing what to expect, whereas in daylight the cruelest monsters were often hiding in plain sight. On a night like tonight, however, he couldn't shake the feeling of unease that permeated him down to the very bone.

Or maybe that was just the cold.

By now he was no stranger to navigating the woods at night. The trees were far too thick to make out the sky overhead for moonlight navigation, but by now Cyran's eyes had grown sensitive enough to make his way through the dancing shadows with ease. He plunged deeper into the woods, listening out for the sounds of activity in the distance. Where he went didn't matter, as long as he kept moving. He didn't like to stay still for long.

A sound caught his attention, like a cracking branch, and Cyran froze. When nothing jumped out from the bushes, he relaxed somewhat. "Must have been an animal." He mumbled to himself as he pressed forward.

He pushed through a thicket of bushes when he noticed something standing in front of him, though it was unlike any creature he'd ever seen before. They easily stood taller than him, with long, spindly limbs and glowing eyes that seemed to pierce through the dark. He stopped in his tracks, holding his breath as he immediately went still. The darkness coalesced around him. He should have been protected from view, though he wasn't sure if he had moved quick enough to prevent from being spotted.

The newcomer was indeed a human, the kind with pointy ears, but before Blank could do anything, it dissapeared, almost as it teleported away. Her stomach growled loudly. She was not sure if the human showed up again they would talk or fight.
Blank rifted as well, onto a tree nearby, and started scanning the terrain around. As she did, a displacer beast howled in the distance, with a couple more responding. Her instincts made her respond and, against her will, she screamed upwards. The noise was higher than the one made by beasts, less of howling and more like roar, the noise vibrating and twisting, no being from this world could possibly repeat it.

That was it, the final straw. Blank turned into a predator and started seeking her prey.

For a few moments, Cyran stood still, observing the creature. It didn’t appear violent, initially. Just when he was about to relax, he heard the distant howling of beasts in the woods. And the being in front of him tilted their head upwards, opened their mouth, and let out a loud wail.

That horrible, bone-chilling scream pierced the air, reverberating in Cyran’s ears. Against his will, his legs went weak, and he took a shaky step back. That single movement broke the spell, and the shadows melted off of him, leaving him visible again.

He pulled himself to his feet, but the damage was done. He was now visible, staring down the strange creature.

Cyran assessed his options. He doubted he could fight with only the dagger secured to his belt. That left him only one option- to retreat, and hope that they didn’t notice him.

Keeping his footsteps as light as he could, he started taking slow steps backwards, desperately searching for a place to hide.

Prey spotted.
Blank dissapeared between leaves, keeping an eye on the human, as it got up and proceeded to retreat. With a crazed enderian following just as silently.
She dropped onto all fours to be less visible, looking almost like a four legged spider. The position would also allow her to launch forward in case her prey would start escaping. 

Despite starving, Blank was not in a hurry. She was significantly faster thanks to her slender limbs. But when she was less than five feet away, excited to dip her teeth in fresh meat, a twig broke beneath her claws. Without much time to spare, Blank launched her long, black tongue, aiming for the chest. The rest of her soon followed, leaping over a log between them.

When the creature disappeared, Cyran was under no illusion that it was gone for good. He kept his guard up, finally pulling his knife out of its sheath. He stared pitifully at the blade- against something as large as he'd seen, it wouldn't do any good. If the creature was still around, this was no longer a game of hide and seek. This was a game of survival.

He held the blade at the ready, movements still as all around him fell silent. Sharp eyes darted every direction, anticipating any rustle of the bushes, any sign that he was still being watched. He could find none. The forest was deceptively still.

And then, the twig snapped.

Cyran whirled around to the source of the sound right as a blur of black darted out from its hiding place, cover blown. He braced himself, though there was no way he could hope to match the creature's speed. Its tongue lashed out from its mouth, aimed right at his chest with a speed he could barely track. Body moving on instinct, Cyran slashed his blade at the tongue, managing to nick it and divert its course, but not enough to stop it from piercing him in the shoulder.

Thinking fast on his feet, Cyran focused on a point behind the creature, trying to remember the sound of that horrible scream he'd heard only seconds before in a desperate bid to pull the creature's attention away from him. The shadows coalesced behind them both, letting out a horrid, ear-splitting wail similar to the sound of the displacer beasts from earlier.

When her tongue pierced the human, she felt the taste of blood, working on her almost like a drug. She was ready to attack again, but a displacer beast appeared out of nowhere behind her. And where is one there is five more. A herd of displacers would endanger her and her prey, they had to be taken care of.
Blank turned back, seeking any signs of movement. For a longer while, nothing happened. After another while nothing happened. Did they give up?

She checked on the human, but the forest behind was empty. He was gone.
Blank forgot about displacers and climbed on a tree, trying to spot something from higher position. And she did, a small, bright oval of a face in the distance.
Rifting from a tree to a tree, she drew closer.

Gnarled branches clawed at him as he ran, but he barely registered the feeling from the adrenaline coursing through him. He had abandoned stealth to put as much distance between himself and the creature as possible, though he had no idea how much good that would do him. The creature seemed perceptive, and he wasn’t sure that trick would work a second time.

As he ran, boots splashing in the mud, a glint of light from the corner of his eye caught his attention. Cyran turned, noticing one of the few stray moonbeams from the trees catching on an object in one of the puddles. He slowed, bending down to pick up the object.

“Glasses?”

They had a bit of mud on the lenses that Cyran cleaned off with his sleeve, surprised. Despite the dirt, they looked like they’d only been dropped recently. Had someone else been here recently? Had they also encountered that creature? If so, what had happened to them?

Suddenly, Cyran realized how quiet everything had fallen. He looked around wildly for any sign that he was still being followed by that creature lurking in the shadows.

With his free hand, he gripped his shoulder, where the wound was still bleeding. He couldn’t see anything, but that didn’t mean it was still out there.

The human stopped in the middle of a familiar looking clearing, so Blank had to get down back on ground. She dropped on her front limbs again and headed towards the figure.

It was holding something. A pair of glasses...

Suddenly Blank managed to recover her senses for a while, long enough to raise herself and got out a singular word.

-Run

She bend, losing control again. Another roar escaped her throat and she charged.

Blank marked a claw slash and blinked behind the human to perform a proper one. Then her tongue got launched again, trying to wrap around the legs.

Cyran didn't have time to think long about the fact that the creature had spoken to him, or the fact that it was warning him to escape from... itself, before it hunched over and let out another guttural cry that shook the trees around them. It charged at him, and Cyran barely had time to brace himself for impact. Nothing came, however, as the creature disappeared in the blink of an eye.

In his confusion, his reaction time was slow, and he couldn't stop the creature's tongue from wrapping around his legs, making him lose his balance and fall to the ground. The pair of glasses fell out of his hands and landed in the mud, just out of his reach. His shoulder, where the creature had previously stabbed him, burned. He cried out on instinct, kicking out to get the appendage off of him in vain.

He tried to think back to their first encounter in the woods. The creature hadn't seemed vicious until it heard those displacer beasts. Something had set it off. Could it be calmed down?

Calling out to it was probably useless, but he felt the need to try, nonetheless. Still uselessly struggling to get out of the grapple, he slashed his knife at the creature's tongue once more. He wasn't sure if he had triggered the creature to go crazy, but there was one thing left he could try if he wanted to escape from this place alive.

"Something intelligent is in there- there must be some way to calm it down!"

At least, he hoped.

Her tongue twitched, in order to avoid the slash, but she couldn't eat yet, because the beasts she heard before drew closer. A lot closer.
Blank had to drop her prey and defend herself. Four or five beasts appeared from between the trees, all attacking at once.
But they faced someone familiar with their tactics.

As the first one rifted behind her back, Blank already started turning and caught two of its tails. The suprised beast then got smashed into another, with bones cracking like twigs in both of them. In just a couple seconds half of the herd was gone.
The remaining two jumped forward, ready to avenge their friends, but one of them got pierced mid air by her tongue, with another rifting away to attack again. But Blank followed it and crushed its skull in her grip. Too bad they were unedible.
The entire fight took less than fifteen seconds, but her prey was gone again.

Cyran shivered where he stood, unable to move as the gruesome scene unfolded. That turned out to save his life, as shadows protected him from being seen when the creature turned around after having decimated the displacer beasts with brutal speed and efficiency.

He thanked his lucky stars that the creature had yet to catch him. If he took even one blow head on…

But the creature had yet to grab him. If there was one thing Cyran was good at, it was hiding. And there was one trick up his sleeve he had yet to use.

As the creature looked around for him, Cyran reached out to press his palm against any visible inch of the creature’s skin he could reach. One touch was all he needed. All at once, every detail of Cyran would fade into obscurity in the creature’s memory, blurring his features in darkness in their mind.

As if Cyran had never existed at all.

He had no idea if this would work, but at the very least, this would give him time to retreat and watch from the shadows. As he snuck off in the few precious moments he had while the creature recovered its senses, he grabbed the glasses and left them in plain sight for it to see.

And then he took refuge in the darkness once more.

As she turned, Blank felt a slight touch on the back of her leg, and was about to turn around, but suddenly her head became heavy.

She hated this place. The trees around were dense enough to block out any moonlight, and even if any light appeared, it only made terrain around more confusing via dancing shadows. But by far the worst part was lack of edible food. The herd of displacer beasts she must've killed a while ago had no taste and could not satisfy her.

Nearby she spotted her glasses, lying in a completely different spot that Blank left them. Was something wrong with her memory?

A bush moved nearby and she suddenly felt a taste of blood on her lips. Pieces started coming together, but Blank marched away, in an attempt to stop herself from hunting the person who most likely helped her.

She saw a small path, barely visible in the light, but hopefully it would lead her out of this place.